PORTIONS OF THIS BOOK ORIGINALLY APPEARED IN NEW YORK PRESS, the New York Times, the Chiseler, Cabinet, and the Truth Barrier. Reprinted by permission.
“Save the Village” from Parade by Jerry Herman Copyright © 1960 (renewed) Jerry Herman. All rights controlled by Jerry Herman Music Co. Exclusive agent: Edwin H. Morris & Company, a division of MPL Music Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard Corporation.
Excerpts from “18 West 11th Street” from Collected Poems by James Merrill, edited by J. D. McClatchy and Stephen Yenser, copyright © 2001 by the Literary Estate of James Merrill at Washington University. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. Any third party use of the material, outside of this publication, is prohibited.
Excerpts from Vibrations and Offbeat by David Amram reprinted by permission of Paradigm Publishing.
Excerpts from Malcolm Cowley’s Exile’s Return reprinted by permission of Penguin USA.
Notes
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INTRODUCTION
vii “America was one thing”: Sukenick, Ronald. Down and In, p. 15.
vii “You could sit on a bar stool . . .”: Dylan, Bob. Chronicles, p. 47.
xi “What happens when . . .”: Burroughs, William. Junky, Queer, Naked Lunch, p. 275.
1. BOSSEN BOUWERIE
3 “the motliest assortment . . .”: Burrows, Edwin G., and Mike Wallace. Gotham, p. 31.
3 The first Jews: Ibid., p. 60.
3 Predominantly male: Caldwell, Mark. New York Night, pp. 12–13.
4 Wouter Van Twiller: Jackson, Kenneth T., ed. The Encyclopedia of New York City, p. 506.
4 His farmhouse: Boyer, Christine. “Straight Down Christopher Street,” in Greenwich Village: Culture and Counterculture, Rick Beard and Leslie Cohen Berlowitz, eds. pp. 36–37.
4 A native settlement: Geismar, Joan H. “The Village Underground,” in Greenwich Village, p. 55.
4 In 1644 the first black residents: Foote, Thelma Wills. “Crossroads or Settlement?” in Beard and Berlowitz, pp. 120–22.
5 Kieft and his cohort: Caldwell, pp. 17–18.
6 The following year: Lepore, Jill. New York Burning, pp. 53–58.
6 As a result: Foote, p. 123.
6 The stone Great Dock: Buttenwieser, Ann L. Manhattan Water-Bound, pp. 29–34.
7 “As late as 1820 . . .”: Haswell, Charles Haynes. Reminiscences of New York by an Octogenarian (1816 to 1860), p. 35.
8 From the day it was published: Gray, Christopher. “Are Manhattan’s Right Angles Wrong?” New York Times, October 23, 2005.
8 “The magnificent opportunity . . .”: Janvier, Thomas Allibone. “The Evolution of New York,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, June 1893.
2. A MAGNET FOR MISFITS
10 In the 1650s: Janvier, Thomas Allibone. In Old New York, p. 90.
10 It’s mentioned again: Danckaerts, Jasper. The Journal of Jasper Danckaerts 1679–1780, pp. 66–68.
10 Because the settlements: Harris, Luther S. Around Washington Square, p. ix.
11 In the 1740s: Boyer, Christine. “Straight Down Christopher Street,” in Greenwich Village, Rick Beard and Leslie Cohen Berlowitz, eds. p. 37.
11 Warren was evidently: Burrows, Edwin G., and Mike Wallace. Gotham, p. 178.
11 the three parallel east-west roads: Moscow, Henry. The Street Book, p. 37.
11 Other wealthy New Yorkers: Burrows and Wallace, p. 178.
11 Haswell, in Reminiscences: Haswell, Charles Haynes. Reminiscences of New York by an Octogenarian (1816 to 1860), p. 108.
12 Abraham Mortier leased: Burrows and Wallace, p. 178.
12 George Washington made it: Dunshee, Kenneth Holcomb. As You Pass By, p. 213.
13 John Jacob Astor: Lockwood, Charles. Manhattan Moves Uptown, p. 68.
13 In 1913, when the city: “Wreckers Uncover Aaron Burr House,” New York Times, December 11, 1913.
15 “When President Thomas Jefferson . . .”: Ritchie, Donald A. American Journalists, p. 25.
15 In 1808 Paine moved: Kazin, Alfred. “Greenwich Village Writers,” in Greenwich Village, p. 292.
15 One of his few obituaries: Kaplan, James S. “Thomas Paine’s America,” Last Exit, May 20, 2009 (http://lastexitmag.com/article/thomas-paines-america).
16 “deep damp cellars . . .”: Janvier, Thomas Allibone. “The Evolution of New York,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, June 1893.
16 the especially virulent epidemic: Haswell, p. 135.
17 In one week: Scherzer, Kenneth A. The Unbounded Community, p. 144.
17 Between 1825 and 1835: Ware, Caroline F. Greenwich Village, 1920–1930, p. 10.
17 New York grew and flowed: Scherzer, p. 25.
17 Newgate Prison opened: Boyer, p. 39.
18 Fulton, a Pennsylvania-born inventor: Lewis, Tom. The Hudson, pp. 155–64.
19 Over the next thirty years this soggy ground: Harris, p. 6.
19 “a great public barbecue . . .”: Bender, Thomas. “Washington Square in the Growing City,” in Beard and Berlowitz, p. 28.
20 James was born: Edmiston, Susan, and Linda D. Cirino. Literary New York, pp. 39–41.
20 In 1832, the fledgling University: Harris, pp. 18–20.
21 To cut construction costs: Walkowitz, Daniel J. “The Artisans and Builders of Nineteenth-Century New York,” in Beard and Berlowitz, pp. 202–3.
21 A long block: Harris, pp. 12–14.
21 The literary historian Sandra Tomc argues: Tomc, Sandra M. “Poe and His Circle,” in Kevin J. Hayes, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Edgar Allan Poe, pp. 22–24.
23 Tomc speculates that: Ibid., pp. 26–30.
24 Village lore tenuously connects: Gray, Christopher. “Streetscapes,” New York Times, October 10, 1993.
3. THE FIRST BOHEMIANS
29 The idea of the individual artistic genius: Wilson, Elizabeth. Bohemians, p. 2.
29 The few insurgent spirits: Hobsbawm, Eric. The Age of Revolution, p. 260.
29 The poet Kenneth Rexroth: Rexroth, Kenneth. World Outside the Window, p. 58.
29 “required furniture, ceramics . . .”: Wilson, pp. 16–17.
30 “left to cast his soul . . .”: Hobsbawm, p. 261.
30 “essentially an oppositional fraction . . .”: Wilson, p. 22.
30 “acting out the conflicts . . .”: Seigel, Jerrold. Bohemian Paris, p. 11.
31 Malcolm Cowley points out: Cowley, Malcolm. Exile’s Return, p. 55.
32 The country’s economic boom ended: Huston, James L. The Panic of 1857 and the Coming of the Civil War, pp. 14–34.
33 in the cellar of the Coleman House: Harris, Luther S. Around Washington Square, p. 52.
33 Next door to Coleman House: Ibid., pp. 34–40.
33 As the city surged up toward: Lockwood, Charles. Manhattan Moves Uptown, pp. 125–35.
34 In the evenings Broadway: Schmidgall, Gary. Walt Whitman, p. 98.
34 Upwards of a hundred brothels: Gilfoyle, Timothy J. City of Eros, pp. 120–23.
35 In its 1890 obituary: “Death of Charles I. Pfaff,” New York Times, April 26, 1890.
35 “Far from a pack of . . .”: Stansell, Christine. “Whitman at Pfaff’s: Commercial Culture, Literary Life and New York Bohemia at Mid-Century,” Walt Whitman Quarterly Review 10 (Winter 1993).
35 By January 1858 the New York Times: “Bohemia in New-York,” New York Times, January 6, 1858.
36 According to legend Clapp: Wilson, p. 141.
36 When the Nation appeared: Parry, Albert. Garrets and Pretenders, pp. 44–45.
37 Stansell points out: Stansell, Christine. American Moderns, pp. 111–12.
37 “I have finished reading ‘Beulah’ . . .”: Clare, Ada. “Thoughts and Things,” Saturday Press, November 12, 1859. Scanned issues of the Saturday Press are archived at the excellent website The Vault at
Pfaff’s (http://digital.lib.lehigh.edu/pfaffs/).
38 where developers had been building: Lockwood, pp. 249–50.
38 According to another actress: Eytinge, Rose. The Memories of Rose Eytinge, pp. 21–22.
38 “When I say that I am a Bohemian . . .”: O’Brien, Fitz-James. The Poems and Stories of Fitz-James O’Brien, pp. 286–87.
39 “sitting out the long period . . .”: Stansell, “Whitman at Pfaff’s.”
41 As a young newspaperman: Loving, Jerome. “A Newly Discovered Whitman Poem,” Walt Whitman Quarterly Review 11, no. 3 (Winter 1994).
42 He and Clapp were kindred spirits: Gailey, Amanda. “Walt Whitman and the King of Bohemia,” Walt Whitman Quarterly Review 25, no. 4 (Spring 2008).
42 Vanity Fair, begun in 1859: Scholnick, Robert J. “An Unusually Active Market for Calamus,” Walt Whitman Quarterly Review 19, no. 34 (Winter/Spring 2002).
44 In cities like New York: Chauncey, George. Gay New York, pp. 76–86.
44 “the well-dressed male clerks . . .”: Scholnick.
45 In February 1874: “ ‘Ada Clare’ Bitten by a Pet Dog,” New York Times, February 20, 1874.
45 Pfaff and Clapp tried: Parry, p. 61.
4. THE RESTLESS NINETIES
50 “a passably good-looking street . . .”: McCabe, James D., Jr. Lights and Shadows of New York Life, pp. 386–89.
52 Before the Civil War, Fourteenth Street: Lockwood, Charles. Manhattan Moves Uptown, pp. 167–70.
52 The area was also well known: Gilfoyle, Timothy J. City of Eros, pp. 210–12.
55 “We entered the resort . . .”: Gardner, Charles W. The Doctor and the Devil, p. 52.
55 a New York Times report on his death: “Murray Hall Fooled Many Shrewd Men,” New York Times, January 19, 1901.
56 The Tenth Street Studio: Gray, Christopher. “Remembering an 1858 Greenwich Village Atelier,” New York Times, May 25, 1997.
57 Tourists in the know: Parry, Albert. Garrets and Pretenders, pp. 64–66.
58 a venerable tavern called the Grapevine: “Passing of the Old Grapevine,” New York Times, July 18, 1915.
59 The new woman appeared: Stansell, Christine. American Moderns, pp. 27–28.
5. THE BOHEMIANS’ NEIGHBORS
64 Working-class Irish families: Ware, Caroline F. Greenwich Village, 1920–1930, pp. 203–4.
64 Ninety-five percent of the longshoremen: Fisher, James T. On the Irish Waterfront, pp. 6–7.
66 As other productions followed: Bean, Annemarie, James V. Hatch, and Brooks McNamara, eds. Inside the Minstrel Mask, p. 260.
66 The seating policy at the African Grove: Edmiston, Susan, and Linda D. Cirino. Literary New York, p. 48.
67 White workers organized: Sacks, Marcy S. Before Harlem, pp. 127–30.
67 “The Czar of all the Russias . . .”: Riis, Jacob. How the Other Half Lives, p. 156.
68 In his 1896 article: Crane, Stephen. Tales, Sketches, and Reports, pp. 399–406.
68 The crackdown Crane mentions: McFarland, Gerald W. Inside Greenwich Village, pp. 12–13.
69 To whites, the most notorious: Sacks, pp. 47–62.
69 Writing about Little Africa: Riis, pp. 156–58.
70 Bostin Crummell was captured: Gates, Henry Louis, and Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, African American Lives, p. 198.
70 Samuel Eli Cornish: Penn, I. Garland. The Afro-American Press, and Its Editors, p. 28.
70 Henry Highland Garnet: Gates and Higginbotham, pp. 324–25.
71 According to an article: “For an Ex-Slave’s Fortune,” New York Times, June 8, 1890.
72 In 1912, Mary Kingsbury Simkhovitch: Simkhovitch, Mary Kingsbury. Neighborhood, p. 112.
72 The one-block Gay Street: Miller, Terry. Greenwich Village and How It Got That Way, pp. 44–45.
72 After the Civil War: McFarland, p. 85.
73 In his book Black Manhattan: Johnson, James Weldon. Black Manhattan, p. 58.
73 Visiting New York in 1904–5: James, Henry. In The Greenwich Village Reader, June Skinner Sawyers, ed., pp. 84–85.
74 Across narrow Greene Street: Argersinger, Jo Ann E. The Triangle Fire, pp. 1–43.
76 Ironically, the strike provided: Sacks, pp. 129–30.
77 This huge demonstration: Argersinger, pp. 21–33.
6. THE “GOLDEN AGE” BEGINS
80 “Greenwich Village was not only a place . . .”: Cowley, Malcolm. Exile’s Return, pp. 59–60.
80 One of the magnets: Stansell, Christine. American Moderns, pp. 79–80.
81 “a respectable, well-meaning . . .”: Dell, Floyd. Love in Greenwich Village, p. 18.
81 Where lectures and polite conversation: Stansell, pp. 80–81.
81 Havel was a small: Churchill, Allen. The Improper Bohemians, pp. 21–24.
81 According to one Villager: Hapgood, Hutchins. A Victorian in the Modern World, pp. 198–99.
82 “a carrier of ideas . . .”: Green, Martin. New York 1913, p. 50.
82 “I felt I was made . . .”: Luhan, Mabel Dodge. Intimate Memories, p. 81.
83 “Gertrude Stein was prodigious . . .”: Ibid., p. 89.
84 as their ship pulled into: Ibid., pp. 101–2.
84 The house, which no longer stands: Green, pp. 52–53.
84 “He had nice brown eyes . . .”: Luhan, p. 108.
85 “I preferred for many years . . .”: Hapgood, pp. 325–26.
86 “she was completely innocent . . .”: Ibid., p. 347.
86 “Socialists, Trade Unionists . . .”: Luhan, p. 124.
87 One night, not an Evening: Hapgood, p. 365.
87 “that very rare species . . .”: Ibid., p. 204.
87 “Sasha tried to kiss me . . .”: Luhan, p. 115.
88 He stayed for a while: Edmiston, Susan, and Linda D. Cirino. Literary New York, p. 65.
89 The restlessly peripatetic Upton Sinclair: Arthur, Anthony. Radical Innocent, pp. 3–137.
90 He was so handsome: May, Henry F. The End of American Innocence, p. 315.
90 “He was young, big . . .”: Luhan, p. 132.
91 “When he came in one night . . .”: Ibid., pp. 137–38.
91 Then, too, he may also: Green, p. 209.
92 Haywood had helped to found: Ibid., pp. 28–31.
92 “Socialists could not agree . . .”: May, pp. 177–79.
93 the Lafayette’s café and restaurant: Harris, Luther S. Around Washington Square, p. 156.
93 “procrastinator’s paradise . . .”: Powell, Dawn. The Wicked Pavilion, pp. 32–33.
94 In her landmark study: Ware, Caroline F. Greenwich Village, 1920–1930, pp. 105–6.
95 “In 1906, Washington Square . . .”: Lewis, Edith. Willa Cather Living, pp. xii–xiii.
95 The two of them moved: Ibid., pp. 86–87.
95 Cather wrote that her Greenwich Village: Jewell, Andrew. “Willa Cather’s Greenwich Village,” Studies in American Fiction 32, no. 1 (Spring 2004).
7. 1913
98 Max Eastman was vacationing: O’Neill, William L. Echoes of Revolt, p. 17.
98 Chicago’s own bohemian scene: Stansell, Christine. American Moderns, p. 53.
99 “A MAGAZINE WITH A SENSE”: O’Neill, p. 29.
100 In fact the book’s author: Chauncey, George. Gay New York, pp. 230–31.
101 “For Americans an artist . . .”: Ashton, Dore. The New York School, pp. 6–31.
102 In 1910 some artists: Green, Martin. New York 1913, pp. 131–35.
103 “The thing is pathological! . . .”: “Cubists and Futurists Are Making Insanity Pay,” New York Times, March 16, 1913.
104 “There’s a war in Paterson . . .”: O’Neill, p. 143.
104 Kemp was dismayed: Kemp, Harry. More Miles, pp. 406–7.
105 On the morning of June 7: Green, pp. 195–205.
106 “at last I learned . . .”: Luhan, Mabel Dodge. Intimate Memories, p. 132.
106 And, as Flynn had predicted: Green, pp. 208–15.
8. THE PROVINCETOWN PLAYERS
107 American theater in the 1910s: McNamara, Brooks. “Something Glorious,” in Greenwich Village, Rick Beard and Leslie Cohen Berlowitz, eds. p. 309.
107 Susan Glaspell, a founder: Heller, Adele. “The New Theatre,” in 1915, the Cultural Moment, Adele Heller and Lois Rudnick, eds. pp. 217–23.
108 Soon-to-be Villagers: Murphy, Brenda. The Provincetown Players and the Culture of Modernity, pp. 3–5.
108 Much the same could be said: McNamara, p. 310.
109 “a social register . . .”: Churchill, Allen. The Improper Bohemians, p. 136.
110 “The young O’Neill was dressed . . .”: Ibid., p. 139.
111 The young redhead: Milford, Nancy. Savage Beauty, pp. 17–142.
112 “sat darning socks . . .”: Ibid., pp. 161–62.
112 Another young woman: Herring, Philip. Djuna, pp. 1–58.
113 “In those days Greenwich Village . . .”: Barnes, Djuna. “The Days of Jig Cook,” Theater Guild Magazine, January 1939.
114 “my upper lip . . .”: Herring, p. 94.
115 as the Brooklyn Daily News quipped: “All God’s Chillun Got Wings,” Brooklyn Daily News, May 16, 1924.
9. THE GOLDEN AGE WANES
118 “Then came yells and hoofs . . .”: Reed, John. Insurgent Mexico, pp. 88–89.
119 It was there that Willa Cather: Lewis, Edith. Willa Cather Living, pp. 141–43.
119 Upton Sinclair heard: Arthur, Anthony. Radical Innocent, pp. 149–53.
119 “I avowed revolutionary principles . . .”: Kemp, Harry. More Miles, pp. 272–73.
120 Emma Goldman, who’d worked: Stansell, Christine. American Moderns, pp. 116–17.
121 The judge summarily excused: Churchill, Allen. The Improper Bohemians, pp. 97–102.
122 “too Thirteenth Street”: Miller, Terry. Greenwich Village and How It Got That Way, p. 141.
122 In the spring and summer: Taylor, Nick. American-Made, pp. 39–40.
123 “all forms of government . . .”: Goldman, Emma. Anarchism and Other Essays, p. 56.
124 One harbinger of the future: Ramirez, Jan Seilder. “The Tourist Trade Takes Hold,” in Greenwich Village, Rick Beard and Leslie Cohen Berlowitz, eds. p. 376.
124 In 1915 he took: Harris, Luther S. Around Washington Square, pp. 192–93.
125 “the layman’s dream . . .”: Churchill, p. 105.
125 P. G. Wodehouse: McCrum, Robert. Wodehouse, pp. 68–104.
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